OTTAWA — Airlines are increasingly hiring temporary foreign workers to fly planes rather than investing in training, which could “seriously impede” the industry’s ability to expand, stifle competition and increase prices for Canadian flyers, a Senate committee says.

That warning from the transportation committee, contained in a report released Wednesday, urged the federal government to take a more active role in regulating air travel, including ensuring that foreign pilots hired to fly Canadian routes “meet all safety, security and professional requirements.”

The report paints a portrait of an industry where airport, airline, pilot and government interests conflict at times. Canada ranks 125th out of 139 countries in terms of affordability for air travel, according to the World Economic Forum.

The federal government’s interest in milking airports for millions in tax revenues without enough reinvestment in airport infrastructure will continue to translate into higher fees for travellers, the Senate report argues.

“If you consider airports as a source of revenue, you’ll never solve the problem of (airline) costs in Canada,” said Sen. Dennis Dawson, chair of the committee. “These are taxes that are bringing in major revenues to the government and it’s not reinvesting in the industry.”

He said that part of the problem is that transport ministers haven’t stood up to their finance counterparts. Until that happens, “we’ll never be competitive,” Dawson said in an interview.

“The government considers airports as a source of revenue rather than a source of development, which is exactly the opposite of what’s done in the United States,” Dawson said.

The report also calls for a national air travel strategy that takes into account growth in the North — a focus of the Harper government — where, it argues, increased competition without additional investment in airport infrastructure may drive up seat prices.

The demand for pilots worldwide is expected to reach 50,000 pilots per year by 2030, while training centres will have capacity to train about 47,000 annually, according to the report.

For airlines, using the temporary foreign worker program — now under scrutiny over reports that RBC outsourced Canadian jobs under the program — was a way of “taking advantage of certain federal programs to reduce their costs.”

“It’s a real issue,” Dawson said. “Instead of training Canadian pilots to take over their planes … it’s cheaper for them to hire pilots from elsewhere.”

Canada isn’t expected to be affected by pilot shortages, but a crunch may come as fewer people decide to become pilots and avoid the almost $70,000 needed to pay for training in an industry where the starting salary is low.

“They’re not getting any kind of funding or government support or any encouragement from these companies to get training to fly,” Dawson said.

“The pilots’ associations that came before (the committee) said this is a major flaw.”

A spokesman for Transport Minister Denis Lebel said Transport Canada is looking into the rules surrounding the use of foreign pilots.

“Foreign pilots, just like Canadian pilots, go through a rigorous selection process in order to ensure they are fully qualified,” said spokesman Mike Winterburn. “Officials are currently reviewing this policy to see if reform is needed.”

The recommendations in the latest report echo an earlier report the Senate committee released where it urged the government to reconsider its role in air travel and airports to bring down the cost of an airline ticket and stop the flow of Canadians choosing to fly out of the United States rather than a domestic airport. At the time of the June 2102 report, about 4.2 million Canadians were estimated to have flown from an American airport since the start of 2012.

That number is now estimated to be about five million, according to Wednesday’s report, and the economic loss to Canada is estimated to be almost 9,000 jobs, and $190 million in lost tax revenues.

The June report argued the government saw airports as revenue generators rather than spark plugs for economic development, with the cost being passed on to consumers. Wednesday’s report argues that the government needs to break with its “one size fits all” approach to regulating the industry, which have been implemented without acknowledging unique circumstances in the North where gravel runways and smaller villages make it difficult to implement rules without great cost or hurting service.

The committee noted that northern airlines subsidize less-travelled routes through more revenues and premiums on higher-travelled routes. More competition on higher-travelled, north-south routes may reduce prices for those flights, at the expense of driving up prices on less-travelled, intra-North routes.

“The committee believes that any efforts to increase competition in northern and remote regions must be applied with caution,” the report reads. “In these regions, the focus should be on improving the essential infrastructure needed to make the air industry more efficient.”